


Brumation of the Soul

by Landi_Elliot



Series: October Tales [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Books, Classical Music, Crowley's Plants (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Existential Crisis, F/M, Fluff, Food, Game of Thrones References, Hoaxes, Love, M/M, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Post-Canon, References to Jane Austen, References to Joanne Harris, References to Oscar Wilde, Sleep, Switzerland, Wodehouse References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 19:07:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21451222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Landi_Elliot/pseuds/Landi_Elliot
Summary: Three friends have challenged one another to write a Good Omens fic each before October is over. The second to finish the task is Audrey who became “Sergeant Tattoo” in the escape room based on Good Omens (see Part 2 of the October Tales series). Audrey is polyamorous and this is what she explores in her story.We see Crowley and Aziraphale in an established relationship, one year after the Non-Apocalypse. Crowley is sinking into another of his long sleeps. Is there anything Aziraphale can do to prevent his lover from spending months or, perhaps, years in brumation?This is part of the October Tales series but it can be read on its own.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: October Tales [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1544227
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Brumation of the Soul

**Posted by Sergeant Tattoo on October 21**

It is coming over me again. The sleepiness. I open my eyes in the morning, look at the ceiling and close them again. Then I sink back into sleep.

Sometimes I get up and grab my plant mister. I watch drops fly and land on the leaves. I open my mouth and shout. It’s sleepwalking and sleepshouting, really. My heart is not in it. The plants look at me quizzically and then pretend to be terrorised. I know they only do it out of kindness, but the Silver Queen gives an irritated rustle. She does like to be cherished – I mean properly yelled at. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make an effort. But now I’m going back to bed.

It’s a kind of hibernation. Only I call it brumation, since reptiles brumate, not hibernate, when it gets too cold for them. They become lethargic. That’s what I do. The serpent in me needs its brumation.

I feel it coming over every autumn – well, every autumn that finds me in a colder part of the world. It has been England for many years now. I shake it off in most cases. It’s not hard. But sometimes I can’t be bothered.

I couldn’t be bothered to shake my sleepiness off in the 14th century but Hell wouldn’t let me just sleep it through. Bastards. At least they left me alone through almost all of the 19th. I only got up several times on my own accord because I missed the angel, even in my lethargic state. But after the holy water chat in the park I went straight back to sleep and woke up only when the century was over and cars started honking in the streets.

I was determined to sleep for at least a year after the Non-Apocalypse, as soon as October chills set in, but it never happened. What happened instead was the angel. He happened to me, like, full-time. And I did considerably less sleeping after that.

But my brumation never quite went away. It was there, sure enough. It is here _now_. It is coming over me, this October.

I close my eyes. I sleep.

*

Lips. Warm lips on mine. The weight of the familiar body. I put my arms around it, without opening my eyes.

“Crowley.” There is longing in his voice. “It’s been _five days_. Wake up, sleeping beauty. I miss you so.”

“Nope. Can’t be bothered.”

Lips kissing my face, a hot breath on my neck, a ticklish touch of his hair.

“Is this your brumation thing again, darling?”

“Yep.”

Lips moving down my chest, then stopping suddenly.

“Should I leave you alone then? And let you sleep? I feel I am being selfish.”

I slip my hand under his layers of clothes and run them down his back. He moans. I get my hands under the belt of his trousers.

“Yes, you selfish angel, leave me alone,” I say punctuating my words with kisses. “Let the poor snake brumate. Can’t you see it takes all my strength just to open my eyes?”

I open them at last and take in the angel, his flushed face, dishevelled hair, blazing eyes. He is radiant and it does hurt my eyes a bit to look at him in this state. My sleepiness is not a joke: every movement requires an effort and I’d prefer semidarkness right now, not radiance, but here he is and what he does to me is not a joke either. It’s a titillating mixture of visceral reactions, and for a moment I am pulled in the opposing directions, but, not surprisingly, the angel wins. The sleepiness slithers away and I strike, I grab, I demand. The angel in my arms melts into a vortex of light and softness and lets me in. I storm and rage inside him until we are both spent. I do not close my eyes for quite a while after that.

*

I get up next morning. I grab the plant mister. I give the Monstera extra misting. I yell very yellingly. The Silver Queen gets a personal reprimand and a warning (a tip of one of her leaves does look a bit yellowish – she must have worked at it all night). They are all spectacularly terrorised. Well, almost all. The Wahoo does not look convinced. I snap at him for good measure and saunter to the kitchen.

Aziraphale is making coffee. Like, really _making_ it, on the cooker, as if he were a witch brewing a potion. The aromas are hanging around as archangels before a benediction (which is not a pleasant presence): cinnamon, cardamom, the whole lot. I sneeze.

“Is this an anti-brumation potion, angel?” I say sinking down on a stool.

“Good morning, darling!” Aziraphale radiates _joie de vivre_. “So happy to see you out of bed.”

“You were not exactly unhappy to see me in bed last night, were you?”

The angel purses his lips for a fraction of a second and then goes back to radiating.

“You know what I mean, Crowley. And it would be lovely if we got out and did something together before I leave for Switzerland.”

He puts a mug of the coffee potion in front of me on the table and I stare into it. Switzerland, right. He told me about it. I think. I sip the coffee and sneeze again.

“How about that Autumn Extravaganza event in Kent you mentioned? Why don’t you drive us there today? Wouldn’t that be lovely? You love those gardens.”

“You only want to go because they will have a tempting food festival as well.”

“I only want to go because I want to spend a lovely autumn day with you, darling. Tempting food is not the issue.”

“If you go to a garden with a serpent, there will be tempting food, sooner or later.”

I surprise myself with this – it was intended as a joke, but it came out… strange. Philosophical? I dunno. Aziraphale also feels it – he is looking at me over his mug, intently.

“You don’t feel like going, do you?” he says at last.

I wince. I have to think about this one. I finish my coffee, thinking about it. I finally come to the conclusion that he is right. Another conclusion is that I need to close my eyes and sleep again. I manage to remember that I need to get to my bed first.

*

I open my eyes and I stare at the ceiling. There is fading light of a bright autumn day. It must have been lovely in Kent today. I close my eyes again.

“Crowley.”

I turn and see Aziraphale sitting on the bed, his back against the wall, a book on his lap.

“How long have you been sitting here?”

“Well… since the morning actually. It’s a gripping novel. Only one thing missing…”

“My bad.”

“It’s quite all right, dear. Wouldn’t be very funny in this one, really.”

Bullshit. It’s just I can’t be bothered to do the flaming sword gag. If I wanted, I’d make it as hilarious as always.

I was having fun with flaming swords ever since we started living together. Whichever book the angel was reading I was surreptitiously miracling a flaming sword into its text. Like, there were these two guys, a dumb toff who got into scrapes and his smart valet who got him out of them. And the valet didn’t like one of his master’s jackets so one day he “accidentally” burnt a whole in it while ironing. Well, that was _before_ I dealt with it. _After_ that, he burnt the hole with a flaming sword.

Or, there was this woman, who opened a chocolate shop in some stupid French village with lots of repressed people who obviously needed her to unleash their sexual appetites for them. She did it with chocolate, I mean, the unleashing. There was this scene where she was cooking her chocolate mumbo-jumbo in the kitchen and obviously the only thing she lacked in the process was a flaming sword.

But Aziraphale’s favourites are always the 19th century ones. Austen and Wilde and all those people who he had met and befriended while I was brumating. He couldn’t stop laughing for a whole hour after he discovered Mrs Norris from _Mansfield Park_ brandishing a flaming sword at a negligent servant. As for Wilde, the butler protecting cucumber sandwiches from two voracious gentlemen so that there were some left for Auntie Augusta was also a hit.

Yes, it was fun. When did I stop doing it?

I squint at the book cover. It doesn’t look like something Aziraphale would normally read. The title is _A Dance with Dragons_.

“So who’s this Dancer with Dragons and why wouldn’t a flaming sword work in it?” I ask.

“Mainly because it’s already got its own flaming swords. Another one would just blend in. It’s an epic fantasy, dear.”

“I thought you didn’t like fantasy.”

“I do, sometimes. Not this one, though. Too… gory. But it’s Marco’s favourite and I do want to have something to talk about, apart from food.”

Right. Marco. Food. Switzerland. It all falls into place now.

“You’re going to see Marco, your Italian chef lover-boy.”

“He is Swiss, actually. From Lugano – that is in the Italian part of Switzerland. And please don’t call him my “lover-boy. You know it’s not like that.”

“Yes, yes, Swiss. I definitely recall the delectable not-like-that bronze Afro-Swiss. All those naughty Afro curls and a funny accent. So, a gory fantasy buff, is he?”

“I’m afraid so. But perhaps I’ll persuade him to try something a bit different as well. He has such an inquisitive mind.”

I don’t get jealous, as a rule. I have known for centuries that Aziraphale falls in love with humans from time to time. It’s just the way he is – he is too full of love. I do not even question that – it’s a given. I admit, however, I have always found it hard to believe he finds them _interesting_ enough. But he manages somehow. Apparently, he has even discovered a trace of intellect in this Marco bloke. I wouldn’t be able to do it, even if I wanted to.

“So when are you leaving then?”

“On Thursday. As I told you at least 4 times already. And I’ll only go if it’s all right with you, Crowley.”

“Well, I must have told you it was all right with me… 4 times already. Stop fretting about it. I’ll just do my brumation thing, anyway.”

*

We spent hours and hours talking about the angel occasionally spending time with others. Aziraphale insisted on this talking, although I said it was fine with me.

I said it straight away. And it was true. It is still true. It took me such an excruciatingly long time to accept that I could be part of the angel’s life, that I could be _loved_, that it is more than enough for me. What more would I want? I do not own Aziraphale and I would never dictate to him who he could and couldn’t love. Can such things even be dictated? It is ridiculous. Humans do it, though. It’s part of the deal for them.

Aziraphale said things that still make me shiver during those talks. He said I was the one for him. He said he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. He confessed he wasn’t able to stop himself from falling for an occasional human, but it would never diminish the feelings he has for me. He said he would refrain from seeing the humans he fancied if I wanted him to.

I told him to shut up and go fuck the whole lot of them if that was what he wanted. I said he had my blessing and my pocket edition of Kamasutra. He knew very well I could produce neither but he got my meaning all right. Therefore, he is now going to see the Marco of Naughty Curls…

Before Marco, there was this Glyndebourne gal. Well, not a gal, actually: she was in her fifties, but when you are a 6000-year-old demon they are all girls to you. Celina Louise was her name and everything about her was just as equally silly. She was an opera junkie, who Aziraphale met during the Glyndebourne festival. Apparently, they discovered their twin passions of classical music and outmoded dress-codes and hit it off. Love-stricken Aziraphale sang whole arias about Celina Louise preferring Shubert to Wagner and wearing exactly the right shade of velvet for _Rigoletto_, while I simply felt relieved I didn’t have to accompany him to all those posh music gigs.

Marco’s tastes seem less refined than Celina Louise’s, but he’s young and feisty, and he cooks divine food, according to the angel. Aziraphale met him in one of London restaurants: Marco was an intern there and obviously required an angelic blessing. And it was an intense kind of blessing, which lasted several weeks. The young man went back to Switzerland a couple of months ago and this will be the first reunion after his departure.

And I sincerely hope it will be a happy one. I snatch the book from Aziraphale’s hands and flip through the pages. Even if it has its own flaming sword, it doesn’t mean I can’t sneak in a better one. I lose interest after a couple of pages, though. I sink down and close my eyes.

*

When I open my eyes again, I can hear voices. No, one voice. That annoyingly sweet voice that tastes like April sunshine. Who is he talking to?

No, _no_. Not the _plants_. I told him so many times not to. Is he speaking to the Dieffenbachia? What has he got to say to her, anyway? She is the mean one.

“You should be patient, dear. He just needs a long sleep, sometimes. No, don’t even _think_ that! He’ll be on his feet soon, I am quite certain of it. I am _sure_ he thinks you are up to no good. Yes, he’ll definitely tell you so himself – you know him, he always tells you very specifically what he thinks of your behaviour. Just be patient, dear. Would you like me to mist you? No? Of course, I understand. It won’t be the same, if I do it. It never is…”

In a heartbeat I am behind him with a plant mister in my hand.

“Do you feel lucky?” I whisper into his ear and as he turns his head towards me, I spray him right in the face. He smiles a smile of a flower covered in morning dew and wrinkles his nose. “Yes,” he whispers back. “Very”.

“Then get out of my way and go somewhere to meditate about the precariousness of luck. I’ve got some serious yelling to do. Deal with you later.”

Later I find him in the bathroom meditating over his selection of colognes. I suspect he uses a different one for each of his different lovers. This yellow thing called _Curve_ appeared about the same time he met Marco. The blue bottle of _Grete_ is half empty – this one has not been touched since the Glyndebourne gal slipped out of his life. I look into the mirror – my reflection shows a demon overdosed with sleepiness and… what is it that I see in myself?

I notice the angel studying my face in the mirror as well. I can’t stand his searching mirror eyes right now, so I grab his shoulders, turn him round to face me and kiss him on the mouth. A bit roughly. A bit serpent-like. I feel I am too demanding again, and his eyes are still too close, although a bit misted over now, so I kiss all the way down to his stomach and then lower still until I find what I need to stop him from searching and from thinking for a while. I make it last a very long while, until he almost chokes on his vocalised emotions.

“Crowley…”

It takes me out of half-sleep, half-dream. We got back to bed from the bathroom somehow. I don’t remember how it happened.

“Crowley, darling. Come to Switzerland with me.”

“What? Why? I doubt Marco will want me there.”

“Well, I don’t mean all the way to Lugano, dear.”

Thanks for that.

“I mean, fly with me to Geneva. We can spend a couple of days together and then I’ll be on my way to Lugano, while you, surely, will find something to occupy yourself with in Geneva. Didn’t you do that elegant hoax there not long before the Non-Apocalypse?”

I like hoaxes, that much is true. Things like the Chaos Cloud or Save Toby were fun, but the Geneva one was indeed elegant. Two years before the impeding Apocalypse I had a dark wave of inspiration and staged a Satanic ritual at CERN. There was this statue of Shiva there: they were practically asking for it. So I had several people wearing black cloaks performing a human sacrifice in front of that Shiva. It was all fake, of course, and I made a point of getting only CERN scientists to do it. Somehow it felt particularly satisfying.

The backslash was impressive: many people believed it was an authentic ritual when I put the footage on YouTube, and conspiracy theories multiplied like mites on a misbehaving plant. Some were really good: like, the ritual would open a portal for the Satan to enter the world and end it. I applaud human imagination sometimes.

“I did, but it made sense back then. Why would I do anything like that _now_?”

“What makes sense to you now, dear?”

“Who asks these kinds of questions early in the morning, idiot?”

“It’s a late evening actually. Who’s the idiot now?”

“Is it? Well, I am brumating, I don’t have to keep track of time. What day is it anyway?”

“Wednesday.”

“So, you’re leaving tomorrow?”

“Yes. Come with me, Crowley.”

I just close my eyes again, avoiding answering him, but I don’t fall asleep. Aziraphale knows this. He keeps talking.

“Crowley, listen. I know you’re listening, so here is what I think. There might be a serpent in you, you might turn into it physically, but this brumation of yours is not a biological state. You’re not cold-blooded, so it can’t be that. Do you hear me, darling? It’s brumation of the soul. I am sure of it. I’ve been thinking about it. It’s not your body – it’s your soul that gets cold and needs a winter retreat. But this winter is also not a calendar winter. It’s all in your head.”

“Shut up, angel.”

“I am glad you’re listening. You need more springs in your life. You need more love. More _loves_, plural.”

“I already have one very annoying angel, thank you very much. No room for more.”

“Listen. It doesn’t have to be an angel.”

“What do you suggest this time of year, an aardvark?”

“Crowley, please. Of course, it doesn’t even have to be a person – you can love a pet. But it could be… you know, a human.”

“I am not you, angel. I don’t do love. Humans, I mean. Boring. They don’t quite float my boat.”

“Give them a chance. Didn’t you mention that woman who took part in the CERN prank? The one that played the victim? You said she was… different.”

“Shut up, SHUT UP. I am having a winter of the soul here, can’t you see? You are preventing me from enjoying it. No, just shut up and good night, angel. Have a great time in Switzerland. See you in April.”

And I turn away from him and close my eyes. He is still saying something but I am not listening anymore. He knows this, too, so he soon falls silent. I plummet into sleep.

*

I wake up with a jolt. Aziraphale is beside me, sleeping. It’s dark. So, still Wednesday, or, possibly early Thursday morning. I need to go for a ride in the Bentley, so I slip outside very quietly, without waking up the angel.

The car has been missing me, so she’s in a bit of a huff.

“Not you too, silly,” I shout. “I am having a fucking brumation of the soul.”

I start the engine and off we go. Brumation or no, but we are driving at 90 mph. We both need it.

Love more, my arse. It’s easy for him to say. It comes natural to him. I lost it when I fell. Sometimes he can be unbelievably stupid for someone so smart. I should remind him about it more often.

Get a pet, indeed. They need care and unconditional love, animals. Like kids. I just can’t do it. I have only _one_ picture on my walls, for Someone’s sake. The thought of getting another chills me to the bone. Aziraphale has been hinting that the flat looks bare. Well, what did he expect from the bare, wintery soul of a demon?

I mean, even _cars_. I have only _one_ car and I can’t even imagine getting another. Do you think we can speed up, by the way? That’s my girl!

It’s a mystery, a riddle, a bloody miracle that I can love Aziraphale. But it’s not a picnic either. Yes, the feeling has been there from the Beginning, but how long did it take me to confess it even to myself? How long did it take to stop freaking out about it? Then to stop thinking about killing it or killing the angel or both? It took millennia before I could even contemplate the version of the world in which we could be together. And then it took us both so long to create that version. And now he dares suggest I should find _more love_. He, of all creatures, should know that loving is hard work for a demon.

Being loved, that’s even worse. I still feel at times I might freak out under Aziraphale’s loving gaze. Does he know how scary he is?

At least plants don’t say they love me, out loud. And they don’t have eyes. I can cope with leaves.

Plants!

I have more than one plant. Many more, actually.

I step onto the brake. The Bentley stops smoothly, with a purring noise. A big softy. It’s getting lighter: the dawn is coming. We are somewhere in North London. There is a silver slice of the waning moon hanging in the paling sky.

I need to talk to the Wahoo. We drive home.

*

He’s a bonsai spindle plant really, but ever since I heard an old lady at a garden festival calling spindle plants “wahoos”, he’s been the Wahoo to me. I slither back into the flat and tiptoe to the plants. The Prayer Plant looks so peaceful with its leaves folded up for the night. He reminds me of Aziraphale. I hope the angel is still in bed – possibly also praying in his angelic sleep. I wouldn’t put it past him.

I carefully lift up the Wahoo’s pot and creep out of the flat into the landing. His heavy pinkish red berries swing as I walk. I sit on the top of the flight of stairs and put the pot next to me.

The other plants must be truly terrified by now – they’ve seen me going away with the Wahoo and clearly jumped to a conclusion. Well, serves them right. They’ve lost all fear recently.

The Wahoo is the oldest plant I own. He is the first one I ever had actually. When did I get you, mate?

Yes, it was straight after I woke up after the 19th century brumation. I heard about the bonsai technique and wanted to try it and that’s how it all started. Of course, I could not imagine back then there would be more than one plant in my life.

Tell me, Wahoo, how did it happen? You must know.

I remember I got my first Monstera in the 1960s, soon after Aziraphale brought me that flask of holy water. I had about 5 or 6 different plants by the 70s. That was when I started talking to you guys.

What? Yes, of course, I call it talking. What do you call it? Come on, no need to split hairs.

Well, you have a point, it is about control. Plants are fully in my power, and yet they survive.

Yeah, sure, not all of you, but still. _You_ did.

Oh, it’s not that simple. I am not scared of loving sapient beings because I can’t control them as fully as plants. I mean… I can, actually. That’s the rub.

I can control them, mate. I can intimidate and terrorise them. Yell at them, mock them, gaslight them. Manipulate. I don’t _give_. I _take_. And when I take, I demand a lot. And when they’ve given all, then what? I’ll just throw them away out of their pot, saying “you’ve disappointed me”. And still they’ll love me after that. That’s the worst part.

You have to be an angel to be able to deal with it.

You have to be an angel to survive the love of a demon.

Well, yes, an angel or a self-important bonsai.

But you definitely have to be an angel to make a demon _give_, not just _take_.

No, you have to be _the_ angel.

Whoever he touches with his love, he inspires to give out more love to the world.

I am not like that.

Doesn’t he get this?

The door opens and there he is, ruffled and radiant, in his ridiculous tartan pyjamas.

“What are you doing out here, Crowley? Are you all right?”

Then he notices the Wahoo and looks aghast.

“You’re not…?”

“No, no, I was just talking to him. Go back to bed. I’m almost done here.”

He hesitates, then steps back in. I get up and pick up the pot.

It was nice talking to you, mate. Thanks.

But as I enter the flat and yell at him, “Grow better or else!!!”

I don’t want anyone getting wrong ideas around here.

*

I watch Aziraphale packing his suitcase. Such a sight.

“You might think it’s a new art form, the immaculate suitcase packing ceremony. Do you want some ambient music on?”

He just smiles at me. He is not talkative this morning. I snap my fingers and his copy of _A Dance with Dragons_ lands in the suitcase inducing a minor chaos.

“You don’t want to forget that. Your cosy little bookclub for two.”

Aziraphale looks at me askance. I turn away and walk to the kitchen to make breakfast. I feel like a full English. It always reminds me of a miniature circle of Hell, the way all those things spittle and bubble in the frying pan.

As I stir them viciously several minutes later, I smell Aziraphale behind me. Then I feel his arms around me, his body against my back and his hair tickling my neck.

“I will miss you, my love.”

“No, you won’t”

“You know I will.”

“Well, yes, you will, in Lugano, when you’re bored to death by the fantasy-loving Marco and his inquisitive Curls. _Mind_, I mean his inquisitive _mind_. But not today. I am flying to Geneva with you.”

His body tenses and then he holds me even tighter.

“Really? I am so happy to hear it”.

“Lemme finish this before someone gets burnt!”

He lets go and sits down at the table. I can feel his beaming with my back.

“After you leave for Lugano, I’ll meet Ines and perhaps we’ll shoot a pretty little sequel to the CERN hoax.”

“Ines?”

“The woman who you said I thought was different.”

‘Was she?”

“Well, unlike other CERN scientists I bribed to do the fake ritual, she refused to take the money. She said she was doing it _for science_.”

‘Interesting.”

I turn abruptly and point the dripping spatula at the angel.

“Don’t even _think_ of getting any ideas!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, my dear. Ideas before breakfast? Nonsense. Speaking of which… when will it be ready?”

I suddenly feel that I am hungry and also full of devious schemes for a new hoax. Not a bit sleepy.

What? How did this happen exactly?

Later, after I’ve watered the plants abundantly and yelled at them not to think of withering or yellowing while I am away, we step out of the flat and I pick up a pinkish-red berry from the floor. I put it in my jeans pocket. Who knows, if I plant it somewhere in Geneva, with a little miracle it might grow into a tiny new tree by spring?

We drive to Aziraphale’s bookshop to put up a notice it will be closed for a week and then we are on the way to Heathrow.

*

Marco is excited by his visitor. He’s changed his mind about what he is going to cook for him three times already. He is now gravitating towards Fusilli primavera – a strange choice for the season, but Mr Fell is a strange guest. His presence fills Marco with… No. Marco knows no words in Italian, German or English to describe this. Perhaps he should learn his mother’s native Ibu after all. She says it has most expressive words. Just thinking about his guest makes him actually want to do it and… and to talk to his mum... and make up with his sister – that was a silly squabble, really.

Unconsciously, Marco picks up a hardcover copy of _A Dance with Dragons_. It’s Mr Fell’s. Marco looks at it with awe. He has read all Martin books, twice, from his Kindle, but this book looks to him as if it has come straight from Westeros. He opens it at random. It’s that bit when Arya starts seeing again, after she’s been the Blind Girl for a while.

He reads:

“And come the morning, when the night wolf left her and she opened her eyes, she saw a flaming sword burning where no flaming sword had been the night before, its uncertain flame swaying back and forth like a whore at the Happy Port. She had never seen anything so beautiful.”

Marco is a bit confused – was there a flaming sword in this episode? It sounds a bit strange. But then everything about Mr Fell is strange, even his version of Martin. He is like a lightning that has struck his life.

No, more like a flaming sword, actually.

Marco puts the book down and gets on with his cooking.

*

Ines is looking at the text again. She is having a bad day and she is not sure whether this is going to make it better or worse. She enjoyed cooperating with this strange man, but the whole hoax thing didn’t work out the way she had hoped.

Ines is not only a physicist at CERN; she is also into cognitive science and rationality. The whole thing was an experiment for her: she studied the way scientists reacted to the hoax. The amount of actual irrationality they exhibited left her depressed for months.

She doesn’t know the man’s name – he introduced himself as AJC and now he’s signed his text with the same initials. He’s either British or American: Ines couldn’t quite tell from his accent. He intrigues her. He is certainly different. She couldn’t understand his motives for staging the hoax. She’d like to figure it out.

She texts him back to say that yes, she’d like to meet up. Saturday’s fine.

She’ll take what she can from him. For purely scientific reasons, of course.

Ines waters her Umbrella Tree, which she calls Octopus. This is not just because “Octopus Tree” is another name for _Schefflera actinophylla._ This is because the plant likes when she sings to it, especially the Beatles’ _Octopus’s Garden_.

The text arrives with “Say hello to our friend Shiva for me.” And Ines starts singing the song softly for her plant. Her day has just become a little bit better.

**Comments under the post**

**Captain Dragon Scaramouche**: Well done, Sergeant! Got quite interested in that hoax, so I googled it. Wow, it was the real thing!

**Sergeant Angel Cake**: How do you do it so quickly guys? I’ve just done two pages and I struggle. You know what, Sergeant, this story is somehow very different from what I expected from you. There seems to be the whole part of you unknown to me. I’d like to know it better.

**As_Era_Failed: **Very soporific. I nearly drifted off.

**Sergeant Tattoo:** Tartan pyjamas party, anyone?


End file.
